


The Relief of Hopelessness

by BuggreAlleThis



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, C.S. Lewis - Freeform, Crowley's Plants (Good Omens), Don’t copy to another site, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, J.R.R. Tolkien - Freeform, M/M, Mental Illness, Post-Apocalypse, Public Transport Mental Breakdown, Suicidal Thoughts, The Garden of Gethsemane, Walt Whitman - Freeform, haematidrosis, religious despair, theological angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 08:58:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19373452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuggreAlleThis/pseuds/BuggreAlleThis
Summary: As each one of us is now legally obligated to write a Holding Hands on the Bus Fic:Crowley and Aziraphale hold hands on the bus to London. Crowley falls asleep. Aziraphale has a nervous breakdown.





	The Relief of Hopelessness

Aziraphale sits down next to Crowley on the bus, heart beating fit to burst out of his chest, and takes his hand. Crowley gives him such a surprised look, and the softest, most beautiful smile.

“Sleep if you want to, my dear,” Aziraphale says. If Crowley feels as tired as he does, he’ll probably want to nap.

Aziraphale wants him to. He wants to hold Crowley’s hand in his, and look down at him with love without having to worry that Crowley will notice. He wants to have a few silent moments. Because his heart is breaking, and he’s so scared, and he’s overwhelmed with it all. He’s like a raw nerve.

“Thanksss, angel,” Crowley says, and after a moment’s hesitation, rests his head on Aziraphale’s shoulder. Aziraphale turns his head to press his lips to Crowley’s hair, which smells so strongly of smoke and petrol and fire, and puts out his free arm to brace them both against the pole as the bus makes a turn for Lewknor.

He has never felt so anchorless, so adrift. And yet… And yet, that’s the worst thing. He isn’t. On the very edges of his being, he can feel the Host, like a cool air, like the smell of jasmine. He is apart, but he remains _a part._

For the moment.

For so many centuries on earth, he felt so very lonely. He felt alone even among the Host; there was something askew in him, something shy and defective – at least, that’s how he would characterise it if it hadn’t been blasphemy to do so. No, any flaw in him was not the result of how he was made, because he was made to be perfect. The flaw was something _he_ did, and he must have, without knowing it, cultivated that flaw. Grown it. He doesn’t know when the first mistake was – long before Eden, certainly, long before the Fall. Back before there was any such thing as doubt or fear or anger. But before all that, there was… awkwardness. Some slight barrier around him. Some stupidity, maybe. He couldn’t read the glances of other angels, the way they spoke together without even looking. He felt as though he was always one page behind them, running to catch up, and never managing. Never reaching that perfect communion.

It could only have been his fault. He must have been distracted by something, in that great perfect bliss, some personal thought or private observation. And in that split second, the entire host moved on without him, and try as he might, he could never catch up with them. He had brought himself out of alignment.

Maybe Crowley had done the same, in that bliss before. Maybe that’s why they had been able to become friends, since – they had the same wicked proclivity for individual thoughts, for private observations. But Aziraphale had run to catch up with the Host, while Crowley and those other angels who had fallen out of the angelic alignment banded together, to spin those individual thoughts and private observations into questions, and from questions into opinions, and from opinions into ideology, and from ideology into rebellion.

Maybe his Fall was always inevitable. Try as he might to run from it, he was always going to be cut out, sooner or later. Oh, but God, he had _tried_. He had tried so hard.

He’s reminded of Whitman. _Admirer as I think I am of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day._ That’s what they last few days have told him. He loves his fellow angels, of course, but… but he hasn’t missed a particular one, in all his millennia of wandering the earth. There was no _one_ with whom he wished to share an observation, one of those pernicious individual opinions with. And if nothing else, the last few days have told him this: they do not give a damn about him. No one missed him Upstairs. As ever, he remained one step behind. Out of alignment. Maybe it was a relief to them, for him to be on earth, so that they were not always reminded of the awkwardness of him amongst them. Like a stone in a shoe.

He looks down at the autumn russet of Crowley’s hair; the demon is asleep on his shoulder, exhausted. He asked once why Crowley enjoyed sleeping so much – seemed to find it roborative. Surely it’s just… _nothing_ , really, unless you dream.

“Yeah, exactly. No pain, no worries, no nothing. Just… silence and darkness.”

Very Whitman. _Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky and feel its total dark sublime, though this might take me a little time._ And so Crowley. The eternal optimist, he thinks, with a wistful, envious fondness. He holds Crowley more tightly to him, as the bus turns a corner.

It’s a strange relief – the relief of inevitability. The relief of despair. Lewis had it right in that book which had made Crowley laugh so uncomfortably: _There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them._

“He’s spot-on. Idiotic upper management are all about the tongs and the pincers and the flechettes and blowtorches and whatever. But when you go further down, the really nasty bastards, they just make you wait and wait and wait. Humans are so much more imaginative than demons, poor sods.”

Aziraphale’s seen it too, from his own side. A scattering of humans so terrified of sin and Hell that they go through their lives in an agony of torment. He’s put in requests to give them a glimpse of divine ecstasy, or even just some _relief_ , but Heaven likes these suffering souls. The suffering is good for them, was always the reply he received. And sometimes they killed themselves, because if that meant Hell for them, then they’d rather get on with it. When that torment of suspense becomes too much to endure, even hopelessness is a relief.

That’s what he’d felt when he finally, _finally_ realised that Heaven would do nothing to stop the War. The relief of hopelessness.

One time, he didn’t put in a request. It had been in a garden – what is it about gardens that makes him act without thinking? One time, there was a human who knew everything there was to know about pain, and death, and sin, and Hell, and for a few hours he had to wait in suspense, before his suffering could begin. In Gethsemane Jesus had been so afraid, that suspense so agonising, that his fragile human body had begun to sweat blood. And, heart breaking, Aziraphale had shown his true form, and hugged him as tightly as he could, wings wrapped around them both as Jesus of Nazareth wept and pleaded and shook. Aziraphale had wept with him, fingers cradling his head close to his breast, tucked under his chin, until he saw the torches approaching. Jesus had wiped the tears and blood from his face, and given him such a comforting smile. “It’s all right. I’ll be all right now. Thank you.”

There’s still a patch by his left shoulder where his feathers are stained bright red.

Lewis would say now that he should be concerned with what he should _do_ , rather than what will happen to them. But Lewis didn’t understand a lot of things. Something’s going to happen, says the scrap of paper in his pocket, and he will have to do something. But Heaven is… letting him wait. He didn’t immediately Fall for his disobedience.

And yet, Heaven wouldn’t do that. Heaven wouldn’t be _so_ _deliberately cruel_ as to leave him in suspense, could they? He’s not Fallen, he’s quite sure; he’s on a bus in Shepherd’s Bush, and he still feels connected to… something.

It’s a difficult feeling to explain. The only other person who would understand is Crowley, and of course he can’t speak to _him_ about it. Aziraphale’s a tactless idiot, sometimes, but he never tries to be consciously hurtful, let alone cruel.

Some humans understand it. Elijah said it right: “a still, small voice”. Tolkien, he felt, understood it. _The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach._ He has hoped that the division of the Host is, in the Ineffable Scheme of Things, a small and passing thing. That above it all, above even Heaven, is light and high beauty. He hopes that Crowley is able to glimpse it, in his forsaken land.

That’s what Aziraphale dreads: the loss of that single star, that still small voice. He’s not like Whitman, or Crowley. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to find that total dark sublime. He’s not strong enough, or brave enough, to be so optimistic.

And that’s what today taught him. The division of the Host is not a small and passing thing, because neither side _wants_ it to be. Each wants to destroy the other…

And so.

And so, in this, the division is, just a little, lessened. There is agreement on a single item between Heaven and Hell – they want the Great War, and destruction. And so isn’t… is that a kind of healing? It makes him heartsick if it is, at the great ineffable _joke_ of it. The division of the Host ended because they so wholly agree on wanting to obliterate the world.

He blinks and looks out of the window. He can’t cry. If he cries, his shoulders will shake, and he’ll wake Crowley. And if God wants him to _do_ instead of to _fear,_ right now the only thing he can do is help Crowley to sleep, to go to a place beyond terror.

Tomorrow, or the day after, or next week, Heaven and Hell will come for them. He hopes it’s sooner, rather than later. He hopes Heaven annihilates him, so that he doesn’t have to know the vastness of eternity without God or Crowley.

Maybe Crowley had the right idea, asking for the holy water. Maybe that’s what they have to do tonight. Crowley takes the water, and he… what can he do? The only thing he can think of is hellfire. If he comes to hellfire after Falling it will do nothing; it has to be hellfire for an angel, and holy water for the demon. That’s what the prophecy says, after all. _For soon enouff ye will be playing with fyre._

Can Crowley get hellfire for him? He will ask.

He will ask when Crowley wakes up. He wants to give him a few more moments of peace.

Marble Arch, now. There are people staggering about, laughing. A fistfight outside a McDonalds. The Thames like dirty obsidian, black and brown and yellow.

He gives Crowley a gentle shake. “Home, my dear.”

“Ngh,” Crowley says, and staggers up. His glasses have gone askew, and Aziraphale has that small glimpse of honey-gold. It will have to sustain him. Crowley’s nap seems to have done him good, and he waves in thanks to the confused bus-driver as they alight. Aziraphale, on the other hand, feels more and more that he’s falling apart, that he must be moulting feathers in the lift, parts of his essence fraying and shedding as he approaches Crowley’s flat for the first time.

He’s too exhausted and depressed to be excited. This is where they will die, after all.

“Here we go,” Crowley says, and opens the door. It’s all concrete panels and low furniture, and the air is thick with terror, and Aziraphale doesn’t want to die here, _he doesn’t want to die._ He blinks through tears, and then stops. Stares. On the floor in the next room, an overturned bucket. A puddle. And in the centre a few drops of black, twisted matter, like cancerous scabs on the floor.

“Ah,” Crowley says. “Yes, if you could clear that up, angel… The insurance came in handy after all.”

“You _used it_?” Aziraphale says, his voice cracking all the way down his spine.

Crowley frowns, immediately on the defensive. “It was two on one!”

“No, I mean - Did you use all of it?” Aziraphale asks desperately. “Do you have any more?”

Crowley looks at him, hard, and takes his glasses off. “No. No more. All gone.”

“It’s all right,” Aziraphale says, wringing his hands. He can’t breathe for the press of terror in the place. “I can make more. I’ll - it takes a while, but I’m sure I remember the rite, and then - I, I don’t know whether you can get hellfire, or - but -“

“Angel,” Crowley says, in that same soft voice he used when he reminded Aziraphale about his bookshop (oh, _his bookshop_ ), and takes Aziraphale’s hands to still them. “Why would I need hellfire?”

“To kill me,” Aziraphale says, and the knots in his throat and chest and stomach all dissolve at once into a flood of tears.

Crowley instantly pulls him close to him, painfully hard; Crowley’s fingers are digging  bruising-tight into the flesh of his back, fingers fisted in the back of Aziraphale’s hair.

“If you think,” Crowley says, in the darkest, angriest voice that Aziraphale has ever heard him use, “that after today, I would _burn you myself_ , you can-“ _Go to Hell,_ Aziraphale’s mind supplies, and he clings to Crowley, sobbing into the crook of his neck. “You can _fuck off_. You stupid, fucking idiot. How could you - ? I won’t. I _won’t_. _Why_?”

“They’ll hurt you,” Aziraphale says. “Hell will kill you, and if Heaven doesn’t kill me then I’ll Fall and then I won’t have you, or God, I’m not as brave as you, I can’t, I _can’t_ -“

“It’s not going to come to that.” Crowley says, and Aziraphale is in agony against him. He can feel their fear and despair bleeding into each other, as though they were the same body. He wishes they were. He wishes he could be closer to Crowley than this.

“I’ll think of sssomething,” Crowley promises, hissing into his ear.

“It has to be tonight,” Aziraphale says. “ _Please_. If I Fall then I’ll be a demon, and the hellfire won’t destroy me, and- it has to be fire, that’s what Agnes Nutter says, _playing with fyre_!”

“Playing with fire,” Crowley says, with a low murmur. “It’s all right. Angel. Stop crying, _please_. It’ll be all right.”

“It won’t, though. It _can’t_ be. They could come at any moment, at- and I never told, I never said -“ Aziraphale becomes completely incoherent, and Crowley leads him to the sofa, sits him down. Crowley kneels beside him for a long, long second, as though he’s waiting for something, but then he gets up, and sits beside him.

Crowley takes his glasses off, and places them carefully on the coffee table. Aziraphale can see that his hands are shaking. “Aziraphale. I’m not going to kill myself, and I’m not going to let _you_ kill _yourself_ , so. That’s where we stand at the moment.”

“S-sit.”

“Whatever.” Crowley’s voice is very firm, and with a grimace, he reaches out, and clasps Aziraphale’s hand. “So. With that suggestion irrevocably off the table, we need to think of something else.”

Aziraphale hiccoughs. “I can’t think of anything. I thought about it all the way back on the bus. They think it’s all our fault, you heard them.”

“Yeah. And they’ll come for us. Like Hastur and Ligur came for me earlier, and I got away, didn’t I? So will we. If they come for us, we’ll think of something, and get away.”

“Michael and Uriel and Sandalphon came, earlier. They said I’d- I’d been acting like a fallen angel. That I had to choose a side. That God wouldn’t listen to me – that I was ridiculous. And they were right. They were right! No one listened, no one cared!”

“Yeah, because they’re bastards!” Crowley says. He interlaces his fingers with Aziraphale’s. “Fuck them. _Fuck them_ , Aziraphale. You’re the one who likes poetry: rage, rage against the dying of the light, whatever! If they want to come for us let them get their own golden hands dirty. Don’t take that onto yourself for them as well. You’ve always been cutting bits off yourself to fit into their stupid tiny little box, so fucking stop it. They don’t _deserve_ your faith. Have faith in yourself instead. Have faith in _me_.”

“I do.” Aziraphale squeezes Crowley’s hand. “I do.”

“Good. Well then. I say we’ll find a way out of this, so. Believe that.”

“And what if we don’t?”

“If we don’t we’ll have had one more day together,” Crowley says simply. “And we’ll have tried. I was ready to go down with the ship pissed out of my skull, but you… You didn’t even have a body and you wanted to be _there_ when it happened, to _try_ to stop it.”

“I’d been so stupid,” Aziraphale says, wretchedly tired and quiet. “For so long.”

“Yeah, well,” Crowley says, and the nonchalance of his voice is belied by the gentle firmness of his hand. “Join the club.”

“Our own club. A club of two.”

“Our own side. And we’re not going to destroy it. If they want our side out of the equation, they’ll have to do it themselves.”

“They will,” Aziraphale says, with exhausted certainty. He runs his thumb over Crowley’s knuckle. He wishes they could die like this, here. Painlessly, and together. “But… you make me feel a little more able to face it, my dear. You give me courage.”

“You think so?”

Aziraphale nods. “I mean… Think of my side - Heaven, I mean. If I Fall, then I’ll still be around, in Hell. Talking about what happened. Telling people that at the end of it, Gabriel and Beelzebub had been unsure themselves… No, I think they’ll think it’s safer to make sure we can’t speak to any of the others about it. Simplest way would be to obliterate us.”

“How will your side do that without hellfire?”

“There must be a way. There’ll be some… some new technology. Like you said in Paris.”

Crowley thinks about this. “Or some old technology. Like _you_ said. It’s in both their interests if neither of us say anything. What if they just… asked?”

“Oh, no,” Aziraphale says instantly. “I mean, when you asked me for holy water, I couldn’t… And we’re friends, not enemies! Well, sort of, technically, then, but-“

“But you gave it to me in the end, didn’t you?”

“Only because I didn’t want you to hurt yourself in some heist!”

“But that’s because you’re a decent person, Aziraphale; take that decency away. Be much, much more cynical than you are. Have loyalty to Heaven as an institution, instead of an ideal… And have a motive. Self-preservation. Maybe then it wouldn’t take a century to hand over the goods.”

Aziraphale’s stomach is in knots. “How would they even ask?”

“Same way I asked you. Probably even easier. I bet they have a direct line between the two of them. They share an entrance in the London portal.”

Aziraphale shakes his head. “But the _War_ \- “

“Yeah, the War,” Crowley says. Aziraphale can see the pieces coming together in his mind. “Hastur. Shit. Hastur said… When I got him in the ansaphone, just before I went to your bookshop. _You and your best friend Aziraphale_ _are dead meat_.”

Aziraphale takes that like a blow to the abdomen. Like the one he took earlier that day. “Uriel said that my – my – my boyfriend in the dark glasses was in trouble with Hell.” Aziraphale can feel the heat in his cheeks, and Crowley is looking at him so _tenderly_ … “So they… they must have been told…”

“They’re sharing information,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale wants to pull away in horror but Crowley’s gripping his hands. “They’re sharing information and you _know it._ You know it. Don’t deny it.

Aziraphale’s face twists, but he nods. “Armageddon didn’t happen. They’re at a détente. But even before that-”

“Even before that they were sharing intelligence. Against us. Angel. Tell me what you were thinking, on the bus. About what we’d have to do.”

Aziraphale squirms, and shakes his head, but Crowley’s golden eyes remain on him. “I thought that you’d use the holy water as a suicide pill. But I didn’t have…. I didn’t know whether you’d be able to find hellfire for me. Especially now. Holy water to obliterate a demon, hellfire to obliterate an angel.”

Crowley nods encouragingly. “If Heaven wants to obliterate an angel, and Hell wants to obliterate a demon, and if there is now a détente… if they’re now sharing information…”

“What if they’re sharing weaponry too?” Aziraphale whispers. “Hell kills you with holy water, and Heaven… Heaven kills _me_ with…”

“Exactly. Because if it’s just both of us in Hell being tortured for all eternity, we’re still visible. Still around. Still _a threat_ to them.”

“How could they?” Aziraphale says wretchedly. “How could they force humans to choose one or the other, make them _die_ in the fight between them, and behind the scenes they’re talking and - ?”

“Politics. Diplomacy. The humans do it all the time too.”

And Aziraphale _knows_ this, really. He’s just always held Heaven to a higher standard. So stupid. That’s what Crowley said. _How can somebody so clever be so stupid?_ And Uriel, too. _You think too much_. Reason and faith forever colliding, and Aziraphale’s heart crushed in the vice between them. “So. That’s what they’ll do. That’s how they’re going to do it.”

He feels so sick, and his hand is sticky in Crowley’s. It’s a very different fear to that of the Apocalypse, oddly. That had been about the _world_ , but this, this is an intimate terror, and all the more devastating for it. It’s just him and Crowley, and their death approaching. He remembers the gnarled olive trees and the dust of Jerusalem, and the bloody sweat. He slowly withdraws his hand from Crowley’s, and there it is, the dark, watery red filling the lines of his palm, the spaces between his fingers.

Crowley looks down at in in horror and disgust, and Aziraphale squeezes his eyes shut, because he can’t bear to see that face, and know that when the inevitable happens it will twist and burn in holy water, and he can’t breathe again for the tears in his eyes and his throat, and- and then there’s a cool, damp cloth on his hand, and Crowley’s finger under his chin.

“Angel. Aziraphale. Please.”

Aziraphale wants to stay in that darkness, and shake his head, but he can’t reject Crowley again. Not again. So he opens his eyes, and the tears fall, and he wouldn’t be surprised if they’re bloody too.

“Have a drink,” Crowley says gently, and there’s a glass of brandy in his hand. “Good for the nerves.”

Aziraphale gives a weak variation of the obligatory huff of amusement, and the rim of the brandy glass is hard against his teeth. “Don’t have any nerves.”

“Impressive you manage to be so nervous all the time, then,” Crowley says. There’s no heat in it, nor cold, just gentleness. “Besides, your body _does_ have nerves, which is why it’s panicking and doing _that_.”

“I don’t know why,” Aziraphale says. “I mean, apart from our impending- darling, I don’t know how you can _live_ like this, live here, it just feels so- there’s so much terror, I can’t think. What happened here? It feels like Heaven, but even more – is this what Hell feels like, Crowley? Am I Falling? Oh, God – “

“ _No_ ,” Crowley says, harshly. “No, you’re not Falling, I promise. I _promise_. It’s just, just psychic imprint, yeah? Like Tadfield. It’s probably just the aftermath of Ligur. Hastur. I’ll put some salt down on it, it’ll be gone in a second. Just stay right there. Take another sip.”

Aziraphale does, and the burn of the brandy is familiar and comforting. Not like the hellfire will be. Another sob tears through him. Crowley picks up a houseplant from a pleasant spot on the kitchen windowsill and walks right past Aziraphale into the next room, closing the strange swivelling concrete door behind him. Aziraphale has no idea what is happening and is too tired to work it out. He can’t move far beyond the thought of Heaven and Hell collaborating to kill them. Crowley was right all along; they really are on their own side. And he’d been so bloody stupid, so blinded by faith…

He takes another warm mouthful of brandy. It must be working, that or the salt, because the scream of fear that’s been pressing at his temples is quieter, and quieter…

Crowley comes back, carrying a verdant green plant that shivers as he puts it down on the coffee table. This one has little white flowers. Aziraphale frowns. "That's not the same plant...”

“No. Different one. Thought you’d like this one.”

“It’s beautiful,” Aziraphale agrees, and places a hand in amongst the leaves. They are cool, and the soil smells of green places and their walks in the parks, and he can feel relief now, relief and hope.

“There,” Crowley says. “That’s better. Bit of brandy was all you needed. You finish that up, and let me look at the prophecy again.”

Aziraphale strokes one of the plant’s leaves and drains his glass. Crowley flicks his finger, and both glasses are full again. He’s frowning at the scrap of paper. “If this is meant for us, we must choose our faces wisely…” He looks at Aziraphale, those beautiful eyes of his gleaming gold, and suddenly _laughs_.

Aziraphale’s face scrunches up. “Am I still sweating?”

“No, no, no,” Crowley says, and laughs again. He leans forward, and for a heart-stopping moment Aziraphale thinks he’s going to kiss him. “You brilliant angel. You genius.”

“If you’re teasing me…”

“I’m not, I’m not,” Crowley says, and his gaze is so _tender_ that Aziraphale could almost dare to believe… “You had it right, in your moment of despair. We’ve got six moving pieces, right? Heaven and Hell, me and you, holy water and hellfire. Your idea was to get rid of Heaven and Hell, and leave just us and the stuff. But it’s like the card trick, or with the babies.”

“Because that turned out so well.”

“Listen! So, there’s the planned execution – you in Heaven, me in Hell. Now. Problem _then_ was how they get the weapons. But they’re collaborating.”

The wheels of Aziraphale’s mind are turning again. “Why is your flat so tidy?” he asks; he takes his ring off, and places it next to Crowley’s sunglasses. The two brandy glasses, side by side; Aziraphale downs his in a single mouthful and places the glass upside down, like the bucket in the other room. The green plant, and the decanter.

“Plant, glass, ring; Heaven, weapon, me,” Aziraphale says, with a self-deprecating cock of his head. “Decanter, glass, glasses; Hell, weapon, you.”

“You only _need_ these four - Heaven and Hell are irrelevant."

"Hardly!"

"No, I mean, they could arrange for me to go Up and you to go Down. But I don't think they will. I think they'll want both of us on our home turf. They'll want to gloat."

"Hell might, my dear, but Heaven won't." Crowley looks at him very strangely; Aziraphale might have expected a laugh or a roll of the eyes, but instead Crowley just looks...

"It doesn't matter," Crowley says, not harshly. "The environment's not going to have the impact; you were right about that too. The important things are you, me, the water, and the fire. We can assume that however they manage it, they'll get the fire for you, and the water for me. Weapons exchange." The corner of his mouth begins to lift, and reaching out slowly, he switches the ring and the sunglasses around. “But if _you_ go into holy water, and I go into hellfire…”

“Nothing happens.” The relief of hopelessness vanishes in an instant, and instead he is pierced with painful hope - _like a shaft, clear and cold._ “They think they’ll kill us by swapping weapons, but if the prisoners swap along with them…”

“Nothing happens.” Crowley looks _excited_ , because it’s a plan so brazen, so outrageous, so dangerous and defiant, that Crowley can’t help but love it, Aziraphale thinks. His heart could burst in adoration.

Crowley beams, and holds out his hand. “Let’s get a wiggle on. They could be here any minute.”

Aziraphale raises an eyebrow, and takes it.

**Author's Note:**

> Aziraphale in the Garden of Gethsemane is a reference to Luke 22:43-4 ("Then an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. And being in agony, he prayed more fervently, and his sweat became like drops of blood falling down upon the ground"). The book which makes Crowley laugh uncomfortably is, of course, The Screwtape Letters.


End file.
